MEDIADEM was a European research project on media policy-making processes in EU member states and candidate countries. The project started on April 1st, 2010 and lasted for three years.
Its purpose was to identify which policy processes, tools and instruments can best support the development of free and independent media. The project combined a country-based study with a comparative analysis across media sectors and types of media services and investigates the complex array of policy approaches and regulatory, co-regulatory and self-regulatory practices established to safeguard media freedom and independence. The main assumption of MEDIADEM was that legal culture, institutional traditions, as well as economic, socio-cultural and political domestic peculiarities exert a significant influence on how regulatory norms are construed and implemented as well as how they are perceived and whether or not they are truly respected. External pressures on the formulation of media policies, stemming from the action of regional organisations, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, were also analysed.
MEDIADEM’s country studies have been selected to reflect the diversity of European media regulatory models and the wide range of factors that influence media policy design and implementation. The countries covered by the project fell under the various models of media systems identified by Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini in Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics: the Mediterranean or Polarised Pluralist Model (Greece, Italy, Spain), the Northern European or Democratic Corporatist Model (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany) and the North Atlantic or Liberal Model (the UK). Additionally, the project covers countries from Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania, Slovakia), as well as EU candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey).
The project was a joint interdisciplinary effort of 14 partner institutions that made a significant contribution to media policy development by advancing knowledge on how media freedom and independence can be safeguarded in Europe.
It was funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme and it is coordinated by the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy.
Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities